All men seemed disposed to hope for the best from Bolivar's future conduct. They, who had been his firmest adversaries, began to form a new series of expectations. It was perfectly plain, and had been for nine months past, that if Bolivar would but decidedly express his adherence to the constitution, every vestige of opposition would disappear instantly. He held the means of peace or war in his hands.

This justly celebrated man had once been the idol of the sternest republicans, proud to have him as their head and their champion; and they heartily wished his glory might again be the most brilliant ornament of Colombia. They were far from admitting that his fame had reached its climax, and that there remained no additional laurels for him to gather. They conceived that a noble field was now opened for him, by entering which, he might encircle his name with a purer splendour than it had ever yet worn. This new path to fame consisted in his obtaining a complete triumph over no less a person than the great hero of the south himself, the founder of three nations; the man of his age. Bolivar had triumphed over every thing, even dishonour itself; but

it remained for him to triumph over himself-his own ambitious pas. sions, and his own pernicious projects; to triumph over the intoxication of his prosperity, his power, and the dazzling splendour of his own glory. This was a triumph which freemen would deem it an honour for Bolivar to achieve. He had created three great republics by the impulse of his genius, and the power of his armed right hand; and it only remained for him, that he should bend his genius and his courage to the empire of the law, the only empire corresponding to his pre-eminent services; that at the head of the nation he should condescend to be the first subject of the constitution, proceeding step by step in the course it prescribed; that he should free himself of the servile and selfish advisers, who sought to make his elevation to supreme power the means of gratifying their own ambition, and admit to his private counsel none but such men as Mendoza, Santander, Soublette, Castillo, Restrepo, Vargara, and other tried friends of their country and doing all this, he would establish the liberties of Colombia on a foundation of adamant, which the lapse of years could not shake.

lombia. His long delay, after he had received intelligence of the insurrection of Paez, was a subject of mystery, and afterwards of suspicion; but was at last too clearly disclosed. The surrender of the fortresses of Callao, by effecting the liberation of Peru from the last remnant of the Spanish armies and influence, had accomplished the object for which Bolivar and his Colombian troops had marched to Peru. The continuance of the auxiliary army in the country, was an intolerable expense; and for no proper object, which the Peruvians could discern. But that of Bolivar himself was yet more inexplicable. By one plausible pretext and another, he contrived to prevent the assembling of a regular congress in 1826, and thus retained the supreme authority, although without any vote of the nation, or of any body of persons entitled to speak the voice of the nation. For if the delegates of 1826 were not legally a congress, they were not legally any thing; and of course, their vote, continuing Bolivar in power, merely carried the semblance of authority, but possessed none of its substance. Hence the growing jealousy of Bolivar in Peru, gave rise to conspiracies, which enabled him to strengthen his power, by banishing some of the firmest republicans; and thus Peru lost, for a time, the services of Luna Pizarro, Nicochea, and

others of her patriots. But they carried abroad with them such an idea of his intentions, as contributed to fill Chile, and the provinces of La Plata, with alarm; which, being out of the reach of his power, they scrupled not freely to express. And, whatever unwillingness the Peruvians might have felt to distrust the integrity of his views; whatever reluctance to accuse him of aiming at tyranny, their gratitude for his eminent services might inspire, his last acts in Peru, left them no alternative.

Long before he quitted Lima for Guayaquil, he well knew that civil war threatened to stain the plains of the Apure, and that nothing but his unaccountable absence occasioned the danger. But he did not leave it long uncertain for what object he remained. It was evident he wished to perpetuate his power over Peru, and after imposing the Bolivian code upon the people, to unite Colombia, and the two Perus under his authority as president for life. Ever and anon it was given out that he was on the point of departing; and thereupon deputations were got up by his adherents, to entreat him to remain for the sake of Peru, and sacrifice his own wishes in her behalf, by retaining the power which he was anxious to resign. These devices were kept in play until he had completed his arrangements for

establishing his dictatorship, as he confidently believed, in Bolivia, Peru, and the southern departments of Colombia, which Leocadio Guzman was despatched to revolutionize. We have adverted to the machinery by which the latter object was effected; and it was not long after this was done, ere Bolivar set out for Venezuela, which he designed for the next scene of his operations. Our first business now is to show how his object was effected in Peru.

On his departure he committed his usurped authority to a council of government, consisting of gene. ral Andres Santa Cruz as president, D. Jose de Larrea y Loredo, minister of the treasury, D. Tomas Heres, minister of war and marine, and D. Jose Maria de Pando, minister of state. The Colombian troops garrisoned the towns of Peru, many of whose troops had been transported to the isthmus, so as to leave the country in the hands of Bolivar's generals, Lara and Sands, and of the army under their command. The government was therefore a military despotism, in the pure sense of the term; and a military despotism of the worst kind, because administered by the subaltern officers of a successful general, responsible only to him for their acts, and sustained by an imposing standing army; the general, his officers, and his troops, being all foreigners, and

The

governing the country as conquerors. The business of the council of government was to procure the adoption of the Bolivian constitution in Peru, and the election of Bolivar himself as perpetual president or dictator for life. means by which they accomplished their task appear in a memorable collection of documents printed in Lima, at "the press of liberty," in December 1826, in all the luxury of typography, entitled "Constitution for the Peruvian Republic." It is an everlasting monument of the laborious efforts of Bolivar to give to his usurpation the colour of legal title by free election, published under the hand of himself and his creatures, and therefore to be considered as an authoritative developement of his views.

When the deputies of the congress of 1826 assembled, it is known to our readers, that a portion of its members subscribed a representation, declaring that body to be dissolved; or rather declaring it to be impossible it should ever be legally organized. The fifty-two delegates who subscribed the instrument, were induced, partly by threats, and partly by promises, to sign the evidence of their own incompetency; the whole procedure being a device to prevent the or ganization of a body, which, there was good reason to believe, would speak out boldly concerning the political condition of the country.

The object was effected by the pretext, that eighteen of the deputies had received from their constitu. ents full authority to deliberate on public affairs, when the decree for convoking the congress referred only to specific subjects. For this reason, their election was declared to be void. There remained in Lima but fifty-two deputies, whose instructions were sufficiently limited to meet the views of the Liberator. Now seventy delegates being requisite to constitute a quorum of two thirds of the persons elected, it followed, that when eighteen or twenty were decreed to have been unlawfully elected, the rest would be insufficient to constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. The regular course in such a case, would have been, for these fifty. two to meet, organize the body provisionally, and take measures to compel the attendance of a part, or all of the thirty-five absent dele. gates; which they might easily have done. Instead of this, which would not have answered the pur. poses of Bolivar, they were induced to subscribe a declaration of political suicide.

This servile instrument is ad. dressed to the council of govern. ment, and dated, Lima, April 21st, 1826. It begins by discoursing in good set phrases upon the topic, which then pervaded all the public acts of Bolivar, as it has of every other aspirant after supreme power

before him; namely, that the prinery and surest safeguard of the rights of man, is general equality under the law, while a strong arm sustains its integrity, beneath whose potent sway, the institutions of the country flourish in tranquillity; while peace, prosperity and abundance flow from it, as from an everspringing fountain of health. To attain these blessings, they hinted, it was necessary that social order, the child of obedience and repose, should be protected by one whose pre-eminent services rendered him worthy to be the depositary of sovereignty, and who could exercise it only to diffuse universal happiness. Rigid adherence to the laws of the land; resistance to the turbulent spirit of innovation; absolute servility to a foreign military usurper, to translate their meaning into plain language, was the first, they almost affirmed, the only duty worthy of a good citizen and upright member of a civilized community. From this subject the transition was easy to the inconvenience of hav. ing a deliberative body assemble, whose members, or any portion of them, had been invested by their constituents with authority to inquire into the character and mea. sures of the government, or to attempt to amend its organization. Its assembling, they said, could produce nothing but disorder, and thus run counter to the great duty of a citizen, as they had previously